Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming device. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image forming device including a plurality of storage units to store sheets in a loading manner.
Description of the Related Art
In an image forming device, a sheet is fed from a sheet feeding unit to an image forming unit, and an image is formed on the sheet by the image forming section. The sheet feeding unit is provided with a storage unit adapted to store a plurality of sheets in a loading manner and a sheet feeding roller adapted to perform sending operation to send out the sheets from the storage unit. The sheet feeding unit sends, to a conveyance route, a topmost sheet out of the plurality of sheets stored in the storage unit in a loading manner by sending operation of the sheet feeding roller at the time of image forming, and feeds the sheet to the image forming section.
Additionally, for example, an image forming device or the like which can perform image forming on plural types of sheets may include a plurality of storage units and sheet feeding rollers in the sheet feeding unit. Furthermore, at the time of image forming, a sheet feeding roller for one storage unit out of the plurality of storage units is made to perform sending operation, thereby sending the sheet from the storage unit for which the sheet feeding roller performs the sending operation. As a technology in a related art related to such an image forming device is disclosed in, for example, JP 58-212537-A.
In JP 58-212537-A, an image forming device including three storage units is disclosed. Additionally, two motors are provided in order to drive respective sheet feeding rollers of the three storage units. More specifically, the respective sheet feeding rollers for two storage units out of the three storage units are connected to a first common motor by a drive transmission system including a one-way clutch. The sheet feeding roller of the other storage unit is connected to a second motor different from the first motor by the drive transmission system.
By the way, in an above-described related art, a space occupied by motors inside an image forming device is large because the number of the motors to be drive sources is many. Also, since the number of the motor is many, manufacturing cost for the image forming device is increased. In other words, it is preferable to have the less number of drive sources to drive a sheet feeding roller in the viewpoints of space saving and cost reduction. Additionally, in order to make respective three sheet feeding rollers perform the sending operation by one motor, it is necessary to provide a component such as an electromagnetic clutch which can control to switch between transmission and interruption of power.
Furthermore, the sending operation by the sheet feeding roller is constantly performed at the time of image forming. Therefore, preferably, sound generated with the sending operation is minimized as much as possible in order to improve peripheral environment of the image forming device. However, there may be problem in which sliding sound is quite loud, for example, in an electromagnetic clutch at the time of idling due to being set to an interruption state.